Doublespeak by William Lutz

• Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable. Doublespeak is language that avoids or shifts responsibility, language that is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language that conceals or prevents thought; rather than extending though, doublespeak limits it.
• Doublespeak is not a matter of subjects and verbs agreeing; it is a matter of words and facts agreeing. Basic to doublespeak is incongruity, the incongruity between what is said or left unsaid, and what really is.
• Within a group, jargon functions as a kind of verbal shorthand that allows members of the group to communicate with each other clearly, efficiently, and quickly. Indeed, it is a mark of membership in the group to be able to use and understand the group's jargon.
• Jargon as doublespeak often makes the simple appear complex, the ordinary profound, the obvious insightful. In this sense it is used not to express but impress.
• A third kind of doublespeak is gobbledygook or bureaucratese. Basically, such doublespeak is simply a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience with words, the bigger the words and the longer the sentences the better.
• The fourth kind of doublespeak is inflated language that is designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary; to make everyday things seem impressive; to give an air of importance to people situations, or things that would not normally be considered important; to make the simple seem complex.
• At its worst, doublespeak, like newspeak, is language designed to limit, if not eliminate, thought. Like doublethink, doublespeak enables speaker and listener, writer and reader, to hold two opposing ideas in their minds at the same time and believe in both of them.
• At its least offensive, doublespeak is inflated language that tries to give importance to the insignificant.
• Business doublespeak often attempts to give substance to pure wind, to make ordinary actions seem complex.
• Indeed, most doublespeak is the product of clear thinking and is carefully designed and constructed to appear to communicate when in fact it doesn't. It is language designed not to lead but mislead. It is language designed to distort reality and corrupt thought.
• Doublespeak is insidious because it can infect and eventually destroy the function of language, which is communication between people and social groups.
• This corruption of the function of language can have serious and far-reaching consequences.
• Remember, doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really doesn't; it is language designed to mislead.
• Statistical doublespeak is a particularly effective form of doublespeak, since statistics are not likely to be closely scrutinized. Moreover, we tend to think that numbers are more concrete, more "real" than mere words.
• Quantify something and you give it a precision, a reality it did not have before.
• Simple, clear language just isn't impressive enough for many people in education. It seems they want to impress others with how hard their jobs are and how smart they have to be in order to do their jobs. After all, if anyone can understand it, then it can't be very special.
• Doublespeak can and is used to avoid those harsh realities the medical profession prefers not to acknowledge.
• It may come as a surprise to you, but advertisements do not have to be literally true. "Puffing" the product is perfectly legal.
• "Puffing" is an exaggeration about the product that is so obvious just about anyone is capable of recognizing the claim as an exaggeration.
• The most common examples of "puffing" involve the use of such words as "exciting", "glamorous", "lavish", and "perfect".
• However, when an advertising claim can be scientifically tested or analyzed, it is no longer "puffing".
• Parity products are simply products in which most if not all the brands in a class or category are pretty much the same.
• Advertisers use weasel words to appear to be making a claim for a product when in fact they are making no claim at all.
• Weasel words appear to say one thing when in fact they say the opposite, or nothing at all.
• The biggest weasel word used in advertising doublespeak is "help". Now "help" only means to aid or assist, nothing more.
• The trick is that the claim that comes after the weasel word is usually so strong and so dramatic that you forget the word "help" and concentrate only on the dramatic claim.
• One of the most powerful weasel words is "virtually", a word so innocent that most people don't pay any attention to it when it is used in an advertising claim.
• "Virtually" means not in fact.
• When used in advertisements, "improved" does not mean "made better". It only means "changed" or "different from before".
• "New" is just too useful and powerful a word in advertising fo advertisers to pass it up easily. So they use weasel words that say "new" without really saying it. One of their favorites is "introducing".
• "Acts" and "works" are two popular weasel words in advertising because they bring action to the product and to the advertising claim.
• Ads that use such phrases as "acts fast", and "acts against", "acts to prevent", and the like are saying essentially nothing, because "act" is a word empty of any specific meaning. The ads are always careful not to specify exactly what "act" the product performs.
• Watch out for ads that say a product "works against", "works like", "works for", or "works longer". As with "acts", "works" is the same meaningless verb used to make you think that this product really does something, and maybe even something special or unique. But "works", like "acts", is basically a word empty of any specific meaning.
• Every word in an ad is there for a reason; no word is wasted. Your job is to figure out exactly what each word is doing in an ad--what each word really means, not what the advertiser wants you to think it means. Remember, the ad is trying to get you to buy a product, so it will put the product in the best possible light, using any device, trick, or means legally allowed.
• Your only defense against advertising is to develop and use a strong critical reading, listening, and looking ability.
• Always ask yourself what the ad is really saying.
• When corporations have a bad year or something goes wrong, the corporate report is filled with doublespeak.
• Often annual reports are simply filled with a lot of seemingly impressive language that says nothing. This is the doublespeak or gobbledygook or bureaucratese.
• See what the doublespeak of accounting can do? It turns profits into losses and losses into profits. The doublespeak of accounting is some of the most powerful and influential (not to mention profitable) doublespeak there is.
• Layoffs are always good for the company and never a sign that the company may be in trouble.
• Using doublespeak, bad news can be magically transformed into good news.
• Dictators are particularly good when using doublespeak to cover up their use of secret police to enforce their rule.
• With doublespeak, a government can kill its citizens while still respecting their rights.
• Often, political leaders are reduced to a kind of doublespeak absurdity when defending their position, or as Orwell put it, "the defense of the indefensible".
• Somehow, dictators never see the killing of thousands of their citizens as anything but necessary for the good of those killed and those still alive. Such instances give rise to doublespeak that is used to make murder respectable.
• With doublespeak, enemies can kill each other while stoutly maintaining their only interest is peace.
• There are three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the military way, to paraphrase an old G.I. saying. So when it comes to doublespeak, the military has a way with words that is unmatched by other users of doublespeak.
• Military doublespeak starts at the top with the name of the Department of Defense. From the founding of our Republic, there has been a Department of War. Until 1947, that is, when the military pulled off the doublespeak coup of the century.
• One important function of doublespeak is to hide reality, to cover up what's really going on. With doublespeak, weapons never fail, and expensive items are always very complicated and worth their high price.
• Sometime military doublespeak doesn't even give you the faintest idea of what it is the Pentagon is paying all that money for.
• Doublespeak is particularly effective in explaining or at least glossing over accidents.
• The military is acutely aware that the reason for its existence is to wage war, and war means killing people and the deaths of American soldiers as well. Because the reality of war and its consequences are so harsh, the military almost instinctively turns to doublespeak when discussing war.
• Using the language of the business world--jobs, pay, training, benefits, advancement, experience, and career development--the military portrays the unpleasant aspects of military life as not just palatable but desirable. In the world of the military corporation, combat is just one of the functions of the corporation, almost like marketing or sales.
• In the modern military corporation combat does not involve killing and death, but is a "challenge" that will "test your strength, stamina, and spirit" and slake "your thirst for adventure", as the army's "Combat Arms" pamphlet presents it.
• As Orwell pointed out, history can be and often is rewritten to suit the needs of the present.
• Political doublespeak is often language that sounds impressive but really says nothing.
• Gobbledygook, or bureaucratese, is such a common form of political and government doublespeak because it allows the speaker to appear intelligent and able to handle a difficult, complicated subject while suggesting that the audience is too stupid to understand what the speaker is saying.
• In addition to saying nothing, political doublespeak also allows the speaker to sound sincere, concerned, and thoughtful.
• For quite awhile, when politicians had nothing to say because they had no ideas or simply didn't know what was going on, they would fall back on that handy little piece of doublespeak, "process" [...]. But "process" lost its luster, so another meaningless yet impressive word has to be found. Some geniuous at doublespeak came up with "initiative".
• For politicians, "initiative" has become THE word to use when discussing any program that is more gaol than fact, more hope than reality, more hype than substance.
• When politicians run out of ideas or solutions, or when they want to sound like they're doing something when they haven't the faintest idea what to do, they come up with initiatives.
• Initiatives only start, they don't finish, which explains why there have been so many Middle East peace initiatives, but no real peace in the Middle East.
• Initiatives, initiatives everywhere, but not a success in sight.
• While politicians often use doublespeak to avoid taking a position or accepting responsibility, or to lie and mislead, government works often use doublespeak simply because it's the only language they know. They really think they are communicating a message with their doublespeak. There audience, however, is just as bewildered and baffled as any politician's.
• Doublespeak can also mean redefining widely used words, giving them a new meaning that is the opposite of their generally accepted meaning.
• The redefinition of words is a particularly powerful form of government doublespeak.
• Congress is one of the greatest sources of doublespeak, if for no other reason than the tax laws that it produces.

A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes by Peter Bevelin

• But knowledge doesn't automatically make us wise--the most learned are not the most wise.
• Judgement can do without knowledge but not knowledge without judgement.
• Make sure "facts" are facts--Is it really so? Is this really true? Did this really happen?
• Separate the relevant and important facts from the unimportant or accidental.
• It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital. Otherwise your energy and attention must be dissipated instead of being concentrated.
• More information isn't necessarily better information but it may falsely increase our confidence--What is not worth knowing is not worth knowing.
• The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.
• The eye sees only what it is trained to see.
• "Checklist" routines for critical factors help--assuming I am competent enough to decide what factors are critical and that I can evaluate them.
• It is just these very simply things which are extremely liable to be overlooked.
• Sometimes we overlook that which is most obvious.
• In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backward. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much. In the everyday affairs of life it is more useful to reason forward, and so the other comes to be neglected.
• Use the simplest means first.
• Which is the simplest, most natural explanation--the one requiring the least assumptions needed to explain the facts?
• There never was a sounder logical maxim of scientific procedure than Ockham's razor...before you try a complicated hypothesis, you should make quite sure that no simplification of it will explain the facts equally well.
• But remember that we see what we are looking for--if we look for similarities, this  is what we see, if we look for the differences, that is what we find.
• The absence of something we expect to see or happen is information and a clue in itself
• Strip away things the don't count and focus on what matters--the core.
• Test our theory--if it disagrees with the facts it is wrong.
• Distance gives perspective--Sometimes we need to remove ourselves from the problem and get a fresh perspective.
• Learn from your mistakes--and learn the general lessons.
• It is easy to be wise after the event, but very difficult to be wiser.
• Don't think about how to get things done, instead ask whether they're worth doing in the first place.
• A lot of misery comes from what we allow ourselves to get dragged into.

THE ESSENTIALS OF PERSUASIVE PUBLIC SPEAKING by Sims Wyeth

• Public speaking is a centripetal social force: it pulls people into the same place at the same time to think about the same thing. It is an ancient technology designed to help tribes, communities, companies, and nations make wise decisions.
• Good leaders generally speak well, but not all good speakers are good leaders.
• Speech that authentically reveals the personality of the speaker, and is addressed to and about an individual or defined group, is far more memorable than a message from a corporation meant for a demographic.
• Make all your presentations personal.
• Let there be drama in your presentations.
• Spoken language is less ambiguous and more persuasive than written language because it is amplified and clarified by gesture, voice, character, and dialogue.
• Cutting back is easier than taking it up a notch.
• PUBLIC SPEAKING IS the number one tool of leadership because when you get people in a room to hear the same message at the same time you have the greatest chance of moving them to action.
• Most of us in business are better at talking about facts and figures than we are at evoking emotions, values, and beliefs. But the ability to unite both types of speaking—the intellectual and the emotional—is the jewel in the crown of public speech.
• Language lies close to the heart of invention.
• Thou shalt not be Arrogant. Thou shalt not be Boring. Thou shalt not be Confusing.
• Stick to being you. Everyone else is taken.
• On Broadway, you’re a triple threat if you can sing, dance, and act. In business, you’re a triple threat if you look the part, know the part, and see your role in the larger drama.
• Accept every invitation to present. Seek out opportunities to speak. The more you speak to groups, the stronger you become.
• Speak 10,000 times. Quality comes from quantity.
• Most presentations get less effective when loaded with too many fine distinctions. As a speaker, you don’t have to be mathematically exact. You have to deal only in probabilities.
• ADVERTISING ADDS TO the intrinsic value of products by enhancing our perception of them.
• People who look good, sound good, and make compelling sense in high-stakes moments have an unfair advantage over those who don’t.
• Do not dismiss the power of perception. All value is perceived value.
• Good speakers project confidence, a quality attractive in men and women.
• The world we live in is created in our heads. The world our listeners live in is created in their heads, and that’s the world we need to connect with.
• To be your own best speech coach, speak to yourself as you would to a client—be consciously positive. Over time, you’ll become unconsciously positive.
• You’ll improve your speaking by improving how you speak to yourself.
• AS SPEAKERS WE face two big danger zones: 1.We fail to express our intentions, and 2.We express things we don’t intend.
• The power of metaphor. Use it—often!
• WHAT KEEPS PEOPLE up at night? The answer is universal: open questions or unresolved problems.
• A speech or presentation is complete when there is nothing left to take out.
• IF YOU ARE SERIOUS about getting better as a public speaker, cheat and steal whenever possible. Watch others, take what you can, and make it your own.
• Boost the signal by sticking to your point. Kill the noise by making sure that your delivery expresses your intention.
• A good talk is a lively mix of fact and opinion, analysis and story, appeals to reason and emotion.
• Keep the audience’s interest, and end with a bang.
• Problem definition is the key to success.
• Openings and endings are equally important. Pay equal attention to both.
• At the start of your presentation, instead of telling your audience what they need to know, ask them questions that have the potential of revealing that they lack complete knowledge of the subject you’re about to address. You’ll get them thinking and rouse their curiosity.
• Beginners become masters by persisting through failure. Or as the Japanese say, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
• Your presentation is always more effective when there’s an obstacle to overcome, a problem to fix, a myth to be busted, or a puzzle to solve.
• Memories tend to cluster around emotions, positive and negative. When appropriate, pack your talk with humor. Your message is bound to be remembered.
• Predictability kills interest from the start.
• Good content is often necessary for persuasion, but usually not sufficient. The landscape of history is littered with content-rich arguments that went nowhere.
• Herbert Simon, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, spoke about the relationship between information and attention. He said, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.”
• Listeners appreciate a speaker who can clarify complexity, without oversimplifying it.
• Speak to your audience in the language of your audience, about what is most important to your audience.
• The best strategy for a shy presenter is to be concise, well-rehearsed, clever with words, and humorous now and then. Forget theatrics. That’s a language the shy should not dare to speak.
• Terseness is a kind of hostility. Brevity, on the other hand, implies clarity without elaboration.
• When on stage, it’s a good idea to point with your whole hand rather than use a single finger. It looks better, more assertive.
• Point with your whole hand.
• IF YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE what to work on—your voice or your body language—choose your voice.
• Your voice expresses logic and feeling. Your body language only gets noticed if it’s crummy.
• Fashion is often out of style, but style is never out of fashion.
• LEARN TO STAND STILL as a presenter.
• The juxtaposition of stillness with movement is very near the crux of any performance art.
• THE ABILITY TO PAUSE effectively lends you stature and helps listeners listen.
• Look one person in the eye as you deliver your opening.
• IN WELL-SPOKEN ENGLISH, there is a change of pitch on every stressed syllable.
• Vocal emphasis brings your meaning to life. Not everything is equally important.
• Vary the pitch of your speaking voice.
• The spaces between words are as important to your message as the words themselves.
• Preserve the silences that make speech more effective.
• Rather than correcting your audience for their indifferent response, take responsibility for their experience. It’s not their job to be interested. It’s your job to get them interested.
• LESS IS MORE. People can only retain three to five points. And studies indicate that attention drops off after twenty minutes.
• So, if you have to give a long talk, break it into twenty-minute chunks and give the audience a breather. Or just stop talking for a few seconds as you leave one section and begin the next.
• Don’t be the hunted. Be the hunter. Focus your eyes on your listeners, one at a time.
• Tone of voice counts.
• Great performers narrow their focus. They put aside fear and thoughts of success and bear down to get the job done.
• MEMORIZE YOUR OPENING and deliver it while the title slide is on the screen. The lack of detail on the title slide allows the audience to focus entirely on you.
• Memorize your opening because it’s the part of your talk your audience is most likely to remember.
• Technology is helpful, but there is no substitute for connecting with your listeners, knowing your lines, and speaking with just the right oomph.
• Don’t use slide headlines to introduce a topic. Use them to make a statement.
• Tiny reductions in friction can lead to significant results.
• Don’t let the audience rewrite your talk when it’s time for Q&A. Find a way to bridge back to one of your main points no matter where the audience wants to take you.
• SENIOR DECISION MAKERS are time pressed, content driven, and results oriented.